|
 |
|
Defining ORC
|
Different people have different definitions of organized retail crime (ORC). Mike Marquis seeks to find a common definition as well as understand how retailers determine how much loss to attribute to ORC. Check out his latest column, Defining ORC...Or Not.
How do you define ORC and how to you determine how much ORC is costing your company?
|
|
| Ken Bierschbach February 22, 2010, 4:47 pm |
We define ORC as "incidents involving the theft of merchandise in quantities that would not normally be purchased for personal use or consumption, for the purpose of reselling the merchandise." While this looks nice on paper, tracking it accurately is difficult at best. We rely on field agents to make the determination that a case meets the definition and then to populate a field in our case management system that we can track. Obviously there are many places in this process where the statistics can go awry. Is the kid stealing condoms to sell at school in the same pool as the junkie stealing and selling to support a habit? Based on our definition the answer is yes, but my gut always tells me no.
As a 33 year LP professional, I've dealt with ORC my entire career, but only in recent years has it become important to label it. My personal feeling is that theft is theft, plain and simple, and we have an obligation to prevent and/or catch those folks stealing from us regardless of their purpose. I always like to start there and worry about what to call it later. That said, I certainly understand the wider implications but also question the dollars attributed to it as the math doesn’t always add up.
Two things are for sure in my opinion; the topic of ORC will continue to hold dominance in any conversation about retail theft, and accuracy in the numbers will continue to be an elusive target. |
|
